He came in with complete desperation, ready to end the whole thing. Ivy league graduate, engaged, a lucrative job, 2 beautiful teenaged children, and just about ready to call it quits, if it weren’t for his girls that kept him tethered on this side of the line.

For years, regardless of his tremendous accomplishments, all he could really feel was the experience of failure, as if the word “loser” was being broadcast across time through his every experience.

What would cause someone to carry this level of pain? To feel a despair so deep that they can’t really connect with the living world?

We talked for some time, appreciating the saturation of this experience in his heart and mind, so pervasive it made it difficult to even imagine what else could be possible. This was all he really, deeply knew for so many years, as long as he could remember.

As we worked, we opened up a portal for a moment of insight. With seeing eyes, we peered into the fabric of his upbringing, in a way that he was able to recognize the misrepresentation that was throwing a glitch in his matrix.

In a moment of insight, connecting with the profound commitment and love he has for his kids, he realized that no matter how distorted his own parents may have expressed it, every child including him, is loved by their parent. Regardless how faint the signal might seem when we’re in a little body with big people running around, sometimes completely incapable of attending to another’s needs, they were always doing the best they could.

Including all the nuance of the pain, the anger, the grief, the sadness, there is a much bigger picture at play that isn't necessarily available sitting in the seat of the little one who so desperately yearns for love.

Nothing he could have done could have changed the pre-existing conditions of his parents, that already had so much momentum down the "crazy train." When this awareness went from a nice concept to a direct experience, it creates such relief.

While it's heartbreaking to finally feel the moment that we can’t have made it better for them, with a gentle moment of recognition, we also get the re-solution that it’s not our job to make it better for them. And that, in turn, can create some space to make it better for everyone.

I sat with him as he took the deep breath of realization his parents never would have had the intention for this child to experience the hardship that followed from a less than nourishing, and even abusive environment. The tears came like a hose that had been cramped for years.

Those tears of recognition, and re-education will mean the difference between a man who takes his life, and a man that, as an adult, has finally felt the love that was always there for him, no matter how awful it might have been. He will now have the capacity to make better-feeling choices, as a new message gets broadcast through the history of his life.

That little one inside can now grow up, hearing “you are loved,” for the rest of his life, however long that may be now. This adjustment will change the trajectory of his future, which has now just taken a major turn.

Human suffering can be relieved. These things are revisable. We can learn that it is survivable to feel better, and to know that by moving forward, we do not actually leave people behind. They may stay where they are, but we are now free to grow and learn in new ways, beyond our predecessors. This is the evolution of expansion. As we respectfully stand on the shoulders of their accomplishments, we are free to receive the life that has been given to us.

Regardless of the events on the outside, love is always available. This truth is an enduring condition of the human experience, no exceptions.

Negotiating fiercely with the unknown, I cannot permit death to take me this way. Instead, I open the animal of doubt inside this crunchy rib cage so I can smell my own blood and feel the pulse of my heart beat that connects me to all living things.